Thursday, May 27, 2004

NanoBot
readers might recognize the name of Hussein Shahristini, an Iraqi
scientist who recently said "no thanks" to the prime minister's
position. I'm guessing that nuclear science is a safer profession than
Iraqi politics.

Back in November, I reprinted a quote from Shahristini just after
the Royal Society in London helped launch the Iraqi Academy of Science.
The idea was to keep one of Iraq's richest natural resources, its
science community, in the country and helping to rebuild the scientific and technological base after decades of abuse by
Saddam Hussein, who viewed science as simply another weapon in his
arsenal of fascism. Shahristani knows all about this, having himself
been jailed by Saddam.